If you’re talking writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg might come up. Several short sentences about writing has a following.
I don’t know how to describe it, so I’ll give an example:
Most aspiring writers write too soon.
They think writing is a transitive act instead of an
intransitive one.
Everything they know about writers writing — all those images
of writers writing —
Hastens them to the desk,
Where they sit perched over the keyboard or pen in
hand,
Caught in the anticipatory gesture,
Eyes intent on the possibilities of the screen,
Poised on the brink of thought, but not actually
thinking,
As though by leaning forward a sentence will tip out
of their heads
And onto the page.
The example shows what I can’t explain: the odd form of his items (not aphorism and not anecdote) and the odd lines (not prose and not poetry).
This example is meaningful to me. When a news writer is struggling, it’s usually an indication that she hasn’t done enough reporting.
In trying to write short stories, I’ve discovered that if I’m struggling, it’s a symptom that I haven’t done enough thinking about the emotional freight of the situation that I find so interesting. I know the facts of the situation and can report them. I’m interested in the situation but haven’t figured out why.
I made a living writing. But I’m still an aspiring writer: I write too soon.
• Source: Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several short sentences about writing; New York: Vintage Books, 2012, p. 47.
It’s one of my favorite books about writing. I used it in several classes, and students always found useful stuff therein. But I think it has a bigger audience outside of college writing courses, where the handbook-rhetoric-reader pile of books is the norm.
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